Burn the Blueprint: The Real Story Behind the Pac-12, the Mountain West, and a $150 Million Fight for Survival

There’s a version of this story that will get told in press releases—one where everyone’s doing what’s “best for the sport,” where conference commissioners shake hands and talk about stability, where courtrooms are just a formality.

Forget that version. Burn it.

The real story is uglier, sharper, and driven by one thing: a desire for control. And right now, two of the weakest power brokers in college sports, the Mountain West and the reborn Pac-12, are locked in a bitter, high-stakes legal war that could determine who owns the West and who gets left behind.

Let’s start with what’s happening.

The Pac-12 is suing the Mountain West over so-called “poaching penalties” baked into a football scheduling alliance agreement. That agreement, signed when the Pac-12 was down to just two schools, included a clause: if the Pac-12 accepted any Mountain West members, it would owe a $10 million penalty per school. The Pac-12 is arguing that the clause is unenforceable. Their legal position? It was coercive, retaliatory, and violated public policy.

The Mountain West disagrees, and they’re not backing down. They say the agreement was signed freely, the terms were clear, and the penalties are part of a broader Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed in September 2024, which functions as a Grant of Rights through the 2031–32 academic year.

That MOU includes:

So now, the Pac-12 is suing the Mountain West. Meanwhile, three of the departing schools, Boise State, Utah State, and Colorado State, have filed lawsuits against the Mountain West, arguing that the GOR and financial penalties are invalid. There’s also a separate dispute over whether those schools can take their conference distributions on the way out.

Add it all up, and we’re looking at more than $150 million in combined revenue, exit fees, and withheld distributions.

In the middle of all this, none of the five departing schools has officially signed on to the Pac-12’s new media rights agreement.

The Pac-12, for all its bluster, still hasn’t disclosed financials from its new CBS media rights deal. What we do know is that it runs through 2030–31 and includes football and basketball inventory, but only covers seven football schools as of today.

Pac-12 officials pitched upwards of $15 million per school when the realignment pitch began. But industry sources, including Chris Murray, John Canzano, and SBJ reporting, now peg the likely annual payout closer to $8–10 million, and that’s without giving Texas State a full share.

If Texas State demands equal revenue, that number dips. If the lawsuits drag on into 2026, the situation becomes even murkier. As North Texas AD Jared Mosley recently said: "If the monetary benefit of going to the Pac-12 were significant, they would have already filled that spot."

The Mountain West is trying to prevent full collapse. It scrambled to add UTEP, Northern Illinois (football only), Grand Canyon, and UC Davis. It promoted Hawai‘i to full membership. However, with Boise State, San Diego State, Colorado State, Utah State, and Fresno State departing after 2025, the league’s identity is compromised.

Its TV deal, which is still being negotiated, could be worth just $2–4 million per school per year, according to multiple reports. Compare that to the $6–8 million the league hoped for pre-realignment. CBS now has the Pac-12. ESPN is focused on the SEC and Big 12. FOX is stretched thin. The Mountain West is left trying to sell a fractured time zone and a shell of its former self.

That leaves schools like UNLV, Air Force, and Reno boxed in. UNLV, by far the league’s most marketable brand and rising football program, is locked into the MOU unless mediation blows the whole thing open. Air Force, consistently competitive, lacks the market draw. The rest? Niche programs with limited appeal.

This isn’t innovation. This is containment.

Boise State and San Diego State helped break the Mountain West behind closed doors. Now they’re trying to rewrite the rules on their way out. The Pac-12 is attempting to establish a new empire on shaky legal and financial foundations. And the Mountain West? It’s fighting a war it wasn’t prepared for because it spent the last decade pretending realignment would never come.

What’s next? Mediation could drag on for months. Federal judges could invalidate parts of the GOR. More lawsuits could be filed if the TV money doesn’t hit projections. And someone, possibly multiple schools, will get burned.

No one’s clean. No one’s safe. And no one’s telling the whole truth.

So I will.

Stay tuned.